The present invention relates to a chest protector and, in particular, to such a chest protector for use by baseball or softball catchers or umpires.
Conventional chest protectors, such as that disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,847,913 issued to the same applicant of the present invention, is formed integrally of polyurethane (PU) foam. Although easy to be manufactured, yet these chest protectors are often unable to effectively disperse and absorb the impact force as being hit by a ball with strong force, thus causing discomfort to the user. Further, even though other rigid materials, such as sticks or blocks made of an engineering plastic, can be provided into the PU foam to disperse the impact force, such kind of conventional protectors are difficult to be manufactured, and are also difficult to be folded for storage. If it is desired to make chest protectors of different sizes suitable for players of different physical builds, it is even more difficult to control the quality and to meet the requirements by the users.